Introduction

The present dictionary project was initiated by SIL linguists in Garo Hills, India in 2008 with the purpose of helping to preserve the Koch language. Koch (ISO code: kdq) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by about 70,000 people living mostly in North East India and in northern Bangladesh. This language is, in fact, a group of several varieties, largely unstudied and undocumented. For more information on Koch see Ethnologue.

There are currently two publications containing some of the Koch vocabulary: Kro-Rungtãk and Essential Word Book. There is, however, no full-fledged dictionary of Koch. The current project is the first attempt at compiling one.

The main body of words was collected at the dictionary workshop sessions from August through October 2008 thanks to its organizers―Mr. Kamaleshwar Koch and members of the Meghalaya Koch Student Union. At the same time, the compiler has used a number of other sources, both written and oral (see Bibliography). The main method for word collection was that of SIL International’s Dictionary Development Process (DDP) based on semantic domains. The words were then entered into FieldWorks Flex―dictionary software developed by a group of SIL lexicographers and technicians.

Since the compiler of the dictionary was not able to remain constantly in the field, further work such as improving the entries, finding example sentences, correcting mistakes, etc. became very difficult. Therefore it has been decided to launch the Koch interactive dictionary online so that every speaker of the language can easily access it via internet and give the compiler his/her valuable feedback.